Who are the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP)

The Deocratic Unionis Party, aka the DUP, is one of the 2 largest political parties in Northern Ireland. It was founded by Rev Ian Paisley in 1971, during a period of time known as “The Troubles”. Rev Ian Paisley was the leader of the party for 37 years and now the party is lead Arlene Foster. The DUP have strong links to the Presbyterian Church that was also founded by Rev Ian Paisley.

The DUP are socially conservative, they are opposed to same sex marriage and anit abortion. They are Eurosceptics and back the UK’s decision to leave the European Union. In October 2006 the DUP agreed to enter into power sharing devolved government in Northern Ireland with Sinn Féin.

The Troubles, refer to the conflict in Northern Ireland which began in the late 1960s and is usually deemed to have ended with the Good Friday Agreement, aka the GFA, of 1998. Although the Troubles mainly took place in Northern Ireland, violence spilled over at times into parts of the Eire (republic of Ireland), England and European Mainland. The main issues leading to the conflict were the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. Unionists and Loyalists consider themselves and Northern Ireland to be British. Whereas the Irish Nationalists, who are mostly Catholics, want Northern Ireland to be released from Britain and become a part of Ireland. The conflict began amid a campaign against discrimination against the Catholic/nationalist minority by the Protestant/unionist government and police force. This protest campaign was met with violence by loyalists who viewed it as a republican uprising. This eventually led to British Troops being deployed, initially to support the police and protect Catholic civilians, and subsequent warfare over the next three decades.

On 10 November 1986, a rally was held in which DUP politicians Paisley, Robinson and Ivan Foster announced the formation of the Ulster Resistance Movement (URM). This was a loyalist paramilitary group whose purpose was to “take direct action as and when required” to bring down the Agreement and defeat republicanism.

In June of 1987 the UVF staged an armed robbery at the Northern Bank in Portadown which netted the organisation in excess of £300,000 pounds sterling. The money was added to funds gathered by the UDA and Ulster Resistance from various criminal activities and donations from unionist businessmen to purchase arms from a black-market weapons-dealer in the Middle East. These arrived at Belfast docks in December 1987 in crates marked as ceramic tiles after a long sea voyage from the Lebanon. Though the exact quantity and types of weapons imported are unknown sources give the following minimum estimates:

• Over 200 Czech-made VZ.58 automatic assault rifles
• 94 Browning 9mm automatic pistols
• 12 or more RPG-7 anti-armour rocket launchers and between 60 – 150 warheads
• 400 – 500 RGD-5 fragmentation grenades
• Over 30,000 rounds of assorted ammunition

The masterminds behind this arms smuggling operation were not the leaders of violent Loyalism in Ireland. Instead the inspiration came from Brial Nelson , a former soldier turned senior UDA-UFF terrorist who was also an agent for The Force Reseach Unit,  a secret group operating within the British Army’s Intelligence Corps. Co-operating with the Security Service (SS/MI5) both organisations sought to derail the Anglo-Irish Agreement and the increasingly friendly relations between Dublin and London by strengthening the counter-insurgency campaign of their paramilitaty proxies.Most, but not all, of the weaponry was seized by police in 1988. In 1989, URM members attempted to trade Short’s missile blueprints for weapons from the apartheid South African regime. Following these revelations, the DUP said that it had cut its links with the URM in 1987.

During the 1990’s peace process, the DUP was initially involved in the negotiations under former United States Senator George Mitchell that led to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, but withdrew in protest when Sinn Féin, an Irish Republican party with links to the Provisional IRA, was allowed to participate while the IRA kept its weapons. The DUP opposed the Agreement in the Good Friday Refferendum, in which the Agreement was approved with 71.1% of the electorate in favour.

The DUP’s opposition was based on a number of reasons, including:

• The early release of paramilitary prisoners
• The mechanism to allow Sinn Féin to hold government office despite ongoing IRA activity
• The lack of accountability of ministers in the NI executive
• The lack of accountability of the North/South Ministerial Council and Implementation Bodies

The DUP won 20 seats in the 1998 NI Assembly election, that resulted from the Good Friday Agreement, the third-highest of any party. It then took up two of the ten seats in the multi-party power-sharing Executive. While serving as ministers, they refused to sit at meetings of the Executive Committee in protest at Sinn Féin’s participation. The Executive ultimately collapsed over an alleged IRA espionage ring at Stormont.

The Good Friday Agreement relied on the support of a majority of unionists and a majority of nationalists in order for it to operate. During the 2003 NI Assembly Election , the DUP argued for a “fair deal” that could command the support of both unionists and nationalists. After the results of this election the DUP argued that support was no longer present within unionism for the Good Friday Agreement. They went on to publish their proposals for devolution in Ireland entitled Devolution Now. These proposals have been refined and re-stated in further policy documents including Moving on and Facing Reality.

In the 2003 Northern Ireland Assembly election, the DUP won 30 seats, the most of any party. In January 2004, it became the largest Northern Ireland party at Westminster, when MP Jeffrey Donaldson joined after defecting from the UUP. In December 2004, English MP Andrew Hunter took the DUP whip after earlier withdrawing from the Conservative Party, giving the party seven seats, in comparison to the UUP’s five, Sinn Féin’s four, and the SDLP’s three.

Paisley retired from the office of First Minister and from the leadership of the DUP on 5 June 2008 and was succeeded in both functions by Peter Robinson . In the third Northern Ireland Executive, the same political relationship existed between Robinson and McGuinness as existed formerly between Paisley and McGuinness. After Robinson resigned as First Minister on 11 January 2016, he was replaced by Arlene Foster . Upon McGuinnes’s resignation on 9 January 2017, the devolved government in Stormont collapsed, as the Agreement demands when no new leader is appointed. An election was called by Secretary of State for Northern Ireland James Brokenshire, whereby the DUP and Sinn Féin were returned as the largest parties, and so began a countdown of talks between both leaders before devolved government could be restored. Currently, Stormont is not in session and no government is in power.

April 2017, Theresa May, the UK’s Prime Minister called for a snap General Election to be held on June 8th. The Conservative Party lost their majority and so there was a hung parliament. Mrs May then called on Arlene Foster’s DUP, to support her and form a coalition. This would just about give her enough seats to form a government. However this coalition could cause chaos in NI as this could be seen as the British government showing the DUP favour over Sinn Fein and the other NI political partles. Gerry Adams and other leaders have been for meeting with Mrs ay to voice their concerns. These discussions have lead to the Queen’s speech being delayed and given rise to much speculation as to whether Mrs May should stand down as Prime Minister.

As it stands Arlene Foster and Theresa May are still negotiating terms for the coalition. Those terms could bring many changes, to both the UK and Ireland. It is hard to believe both parties campaigned for a stable government leadership and have now opted to choose a path that could bring the exact opposite of those campaign pledges.